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The chair of the Minneapolis Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party is defending a recent op-ed in which he argued that rioters' burning of the Minneapolis Police Department's Third Precinct headquarters last year was an "act of pure righteousness" in their minds and a "genuine revolutionary moment."

In an Aug. 2 opinion piece for Southside Pride, a local monthly newspaper, titled "The Cops Started It," Minneapolis DFL Chair Devin Hogan argued that the burning of the Third Precinct on May 28, 2020, three days after George Floyd’s death, was a "proportional response."

Four men have since been sentenced to prison and ordered to pay millions in restitution over their roles in the precinct's burning, Fox News reports.

"They killed George Floyd and took every opportunity to escalate, agitate and make things worse. The cops are rioting and the people are responding," Hogan wrote. "Like it or not, setting the Third Precinct on fire was a genuine revolutionary moment. An act of pure righteousness to open new worlds of understanding. The people declared themselves ungovernable and unilaterally took their power back. The largest international human rights movement in modern history had begun. The youth of Minneapolis carried all of this. The cops started it."

Minnesota DFL Chair Ken Martin slammed Hogan in an opinion piece of his own, saying his comments "do not reflect the views of the Minnesota DFL Party or the Minneapolis DFL Party, and they certainly do not reflect the views of any elected officials in our party with whom I have spoken."

"I condemn Hogan’s dangerous, violent and inflammatory rhetoric," Martin wrote.